Walk through many of Vermont’s village centers and downtowns, and you might notice a pattern: House after house clearly built in a prior era, whether they’re stately Victorians or 1960s bungalows.
These historic homes connect Vermont to its long tradition. But they come with unique challenges, too — some of which are putting even more pressure on an already strapped housing and rental market.
Vermont has among the oldest housing stock in the nation. The average home in Vermont was built in 1975, according to Census Bureau data from 2021, compared with the national average of 1979. The divide is even steeper when it comes to the state’s oldest homes. A quarter of housing units in the state were built in 1939 or earlier, compared with only 12% for the rest of the nation.
“It’s no secret that Vermont has a relatively old housing stock,” said Peter Nelson, a geography researcher at Middlebury College. “We haven’t built homes at the pace that other places have.”
And although many of those homes are well preserved, there’s reason to believe that older homes in Vermont are not always up to the same standards as newer ones. Homes built before 1940 are worth less in median sale price and in median rental costs.
Leslie Black-Plumeau, research manager for the Vermont Housing and Finance Agency, said the organization has used aging housing data as an indicator for lower-quality housing stock, particularly for standalone homes built before 1940.
She said there’s no good data on how many of those homes have been renovated, but “my gut is that that's a small fraction of our old housing stock — that a lot of the old housing stock in Vermont hasn't been renovated and rehabbed.”
According to the agency’s 2020 Housing Needs Assessment, homes built before 1978 are more likely to have lead paint that needs to be abated, and homes built before 1980 might have asbestos. Older homes also tend to be less energy efficient and need weatherization improvements.
Aging housing is a particular concern for renters. Renter-occupied housing units are six years older on average than owner-occupied housing, according to Census Bureau data.
Older homes are concentrated in Rutland and Caledonia counties, and less common in Chittenden County and other northwest counties. Nelson said it was not a surprise that the Northeast Kingdom had older housing since its declining population would put less pressure on developers to build.
“This (is) kind of a reinforcing process where there's not enough housing stock, or the housing stock is too dilapidated, so people leave and people are leaving,” he said. “There's not going to be any reinvestment in the housing stock. So you create this kind of continued downward spiral.”
Another challenge with older homes — and with homes in general in Vermont — are their size. The vast majority of housing units in Vermont have two or more bedrooms, even though an increasing percentage of Vermonters live alone or in smaller families, according to Census Bureau data.
Nelson said a shortage of affordable senior housing has forced many older Vermonters to live in homes that might not be adapted to their needs.
“Some people can afford to go to these nice retirement communities … you're paying like $5,500 a month to live in one of those places,” he said. “So a lot of people are aging in place in their home, maybe with a partner, maybe with an adult child. But the home that they’re in was built for a family of four or five, and it's multi-level. And it's hard to age in place in those kinds of structures.”
Recent legislative efforts have tried to tackle the housing crisis, such as S.100, a bill that would scale back zoning restrictions in Vermont municipalities. But there’s no comprehensive plan to tackle possible solutions for outdated homes. Instead, a patchwork of programs has cropped up to provide help to people looking to make changes in their homes or rental properties.
Black-Plumeau said the Vermont Housing Finance Agency gives out subsidies to landlords looking to make changes to existing structures, such as converting them to a more energy-efficient system to lower heating costs.
The housing agency financed $68 million between 2020 and 2022 in rehabilitation work, which renovated 422 apartments and created 88 new ones, she said.
For example, in 2022, the authority helped finance the preservation of 44 senior apartments at Whitney Hill Homestead in Williston. The renovations included a new boiler and new kitchens, floors and bathrooms in the apartments.
The state-run Vermont Housing Improvement Program offers up to $50,000 for landlords to either renovate existing apartments or add new apartments to an existing building.
The Vermont Center for Independent Living also has a program geared toward helping Vermonters with disabilities to modify their homes or apartments to make them more accessible.
Sarah Launderville, executive director of the center, said inaccessibly built housing isn’t limited to older homes — “my wish is that developers would make these homes as accessible as possible right from the get go,” she said — but many of the people requesting their assistance do live in older homes.
There have been times when the home required renovations to “the flooring or other parts of the house, because the housing was older, before we could do the modification” to make it accessible, she said.
Lack of accessible housing can create a dual pressure on people with disabilities who might already be limited in their options because of transportation, cost or the tight housing market in general, she said.
Yet another population heavily affected by aging housing are people who live in manufactured homes. National safety standards for manufactured homes were created in 1976, so homes built before that time are particular concerns, said Ryan Gerrity, an organizer for the Mobile Home Program at the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity.
About 18% of Vermont’s thousands of manufactured homes were constructed before 1976, Gerrity said. They can also age faster than a typical home because of their building materials and construction quality.
In the past year, the mobile home program has started giving out grants for “critical habitability repairs,” such as leaks in the roof, broken furnaces or rotting wood, he said. For lower-income residents, home repair expenses can be cost-prohibitive.
“Limited financial resources obviously make it difficult for them to invest in those necessary repairs and that can lead to the further deterioration of their homes,” Gerrity said. “They also may have trouble finding a contractor to work on their home, especially if it's pre-1976 in age.”
Living in substandard housing can have a wide range of negative impacts: Poor health outcomes, difficult living situations for families, stress and potential social stigma, he said. Along with providing its own grants, the program works with residents to get them access to weatherization grants and other funding.
When it comes to long-term ways to adapt Vermont’s aging housing stock, Nelson said he was encouraged by the possibilities of accessory dwelling units, small apartments that can be built in a backyard or on top of a garage of a single-family home.
“We're starting to talk about it: Like, how can we make it easier to build more housing, while still maintaining all the things that we value as a state?” he said.
It’s just a question of where the money for these changes will come from.
“To make these modifications, you need access to capital,” Nelson said. “Lower income communities don't have as much access to capital.”
